The tinny pop of the small weapon is sadly anticlimactic, thinks Dr. Hannibal Lecter as he watches her slump.  Brain matter and blood splash the clean white walls.  Her body jerks once, then is still.  Slowly he arises from his position deep in the corner shadows of the room and moves over to the couch.  The camera rolls film deep in the bowels of his memory palace.  He extends one perfectly manicured hand and touches a finger to the gore dripping down her twisted face.  He raises the finger to his nose and inhales the scent.  He inserts the very tip of the blood-covered digit into his mouth, his saliva gushing as he tastes her agony.  It is delicious raw.  But Clarice Starling deserves more.

            He arranges her still warm corpse on the couch as if she were lying asleep.  Smoothing the lines from her face, he caresses her gently, then spreads her eyelids open, gazing deep into her empty eyes.  With the skill of a practiced lover, he eases the buttons of her blouse open.  Reaching into a pocket, he pulls out the Harpy and puts it to the center of her chest, at the bottom of her sternum.  With a quick upward flick, he severs her brassiere.  The weight of her breasts pulls it open.  He bends his head down, breathing in the scent of her.  He lets his lips press against her skin, feeling the ribs beneath.  His tongue traces the line his incision will take.  Leaving her briefly, he returns to the corner and picks up a small black leather case.  He places it on the coffee table and snaps open the clasps.  Inside lies a silver charger, a linen napkin, a crystal flask shaped like a heart, a box of matches, and a fine set of antique silverware.  He walks around the table to the couch, and takes a deep breath. 

            The razor sharp knife glides through her skin like it is tissue paper.  He cuts between her third and fourth ribs on the left side.  He pauses and examines his work.  Whimsically, he extends the superficial incision up on a diagonal plane until it meets the wound on her shoulder.  He reflects the skin back, using the back of the blade in a blunt dissection.  Uncovering bone, he sets the knife down on her belly and plunges both hands into the gaping wound.  Blood is falling all around him as his powerful hands crack her ribs.  He feels a jolt down deep in his stomach every time he hears the popping sound.  When he has removed her third, fourth, and fifth ribs he takes a moment to clean the bones, blood dribbling down the front of his elegant white shirt.  Quickly removing the rest of the intervening tissue, he uncovers her pericardial sac, the membrane surrounding her heart.  He looks around him then, seeking something.  His eyes fall on her jewelry, a thin gold necklace and bracelet.  Removing them quickly, he uses them to neatly ligate the major vessels and lifts out her heart, still surrounded in its fibrous sheath.

He places it on the silver charger, cutting and folding the sac until it has formed a small basin around the base of the organ that gave her life.  He opens the crystal flask and sniffs, the scent of cognac filling his nostrils.  He carefully pours it over her flesh, making sure not a drop escapes.  Lighting a match, he sets aflame the delicacy before him.  Blue fire surrounds the heart of Clarice Starling.  He regrets only that he cannot eat it whole, but must slice it into manageable pieces.  The meat is tough, he reflects.  But the flavor is incomparable.

When he has swallowed the last morsel, he bends his head to drink the fluid left upon the charger.  A stranger viewing him now would see not man but monster, his matchless apparel soaked with blood, his face streaked with gore, his hands crimson past the wrists.  That same stranger might wonder at the tears that are slowly working their way through the stains on his cheeks.  He takes up the linen napkin and wipes his hands.  From his breast pocket he removes two slips of parchment.  One slip he rolls up and inserts into the crystal flask.  The flask he places within her breast, to take the place of her consumed heart.  The other piece of parchment he leaves upon her chest like a sign.  He bends to her face once more and kisses her now cold lips.  He moves to the door.  He does not need to look back.  The mad tableau is forever enshrined now in the entry hall of the palace in his mind.

When the authorities arrive, they discover the paper on her chest.  The words ‘Mischa, welcome home’ mean nothing to them.  When the medical examiner, a well-educated, elderly man, performs the autopsy, he opens the crystal flask and draws out the parchment from within.  Upon reading the words, he is unable to contain the flood of tears that well within his eyes.

If Love himself weep, shall not lovers weep,

Learning for what sad cause he pours his tears?

Love hears his ladies crying their distress,

Showing forth bitter sorrow through their eyes

Because villainous Death has worked its cruel

Destructive art upon a gentle heart,

And laid waste all that earth can find to praise

In a gracious lady, save her chastity.

Hear then how Love paid homage to this lady:

I saw him weeping there in human form,

Observing the stilled image of her grace;

And more than once he raised his eyes toward Heaven,

Where that sweet soul already had its home,

Which once, on earth, had worn enchanting flesh.

Villainous Death, at war with tenderness,

Timeless mother of woe,

Judgment severe and incontestable,

Source of sick grief within my heart – a grief

I constantly must bear –

My tongue wears itself out in cursing you!

And if I want to make you beg for mercy,

I need only reveal

Your felonies, your guilt of every guilt;

Not that you are unknown for what you are,

But rather to enrage

Whoever hopes for sustenance in love.

You have bereft the world of gentlest grace

Of all that in sweet ladies merits praise;

In youth’s gay tender years

You have destroyed all love’s lightheartedness.

There is no need to name this gracious lady,

Because her qualities tell who she was.

Who merits not salvation,

Let him not hope to share her company.

 

 

The coroner ruled the case a suicide.

 

*The above is from the Musa Viking edition of Dante’s La Vita Nuova